


The Mortar, The Pestle, The Sky Full of Stars

by gishmi1ish



Category: Slavic Mythology & Folklore
Genre: Age Difference, F/F, Femslash, Folklore, Humor, Kinky, Magic, Mild self-destructive tendencies, Other, Rough Sex, Tenderness, fairy tale, power differential, semi-consensual sexual violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 10:52:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10989432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gishmi1ish/pseuds/gishmi1ish
Summary: I can't be the only one out there who thinks that older women are totally sexy, especially when they might eat you for dinner on a whim.





	The Mortar, The Pestle, The Sky Full of Stars

She can hear how you wish to be lost, that is how she sniffs you out. She came to me when I was not even yet footsore, so sunk in brooding that I did not see the house at first, but looked up suddenly and saw it. A spark of wonder stole my heart, for it was the most charming cottage I'd ever seen. Blue chicory grew up out of the thatched roof in occasional tufts. Below, it was neatly clad in silver shingles, pretty red trim chased with black, windowboxes full of gentians-- and then I noticed the feet.

They were huge: each hard, scuffed talon as long as a loaf of bread, the great tendons standing out under the scaly skin. I quivered, I quailed. I stared in awe. They were the color of dry corn, and strong; cloaked above the ankle in a handsome fluff of feathers, dappled, like the underside of a hawk. They stood still, but ready, and bore the small house in readiness above them. I knew then, whose house it was. I knew, and yet was so sick of my life and all that mattered, that still I went inside. The vast chicken legs bent to let me reach the first stair, and did not rise again until I had passed through the door. I could have turned back at any time.

She was in her kitchen, baking, and the sweet smell of cinnamon made me happy for the first time in years. The little house was warm and filled with light.

“Oh good,” she said. “Poppy? Or prune?” I stepped further in.

“Poppy,” I said immediately. She held a jar of dark preserves, and considered it a while longer before finally setting it down.

“Or I might have apricot…”

“I'm sure either would be good," I reassured her, not wanting to be rude. She scowled at me.

“Poppyseed’s more trouble.”

I said I never minded trouble, and maybe I could help?

“Oh-ho,” she said, and showed me her mill. Shaped like a grinning demon squatting on thorny heels, with his little toothpick held lewdly in one hand, it was made of heavy steel with a big crank as long as my arm. She poured poppyseed in through the top of his head, and I took hold of the handle. It took all my strength just to set it moving, and I found that once I started, I could not let go. She cackled a little.

“Not til you've ground it all,” she said, so I set my feet and cranked with all my might. After 5 exhausting minutes, I put my head over my shoulder to give her a look.

“These things you’re making better be amazing.” She winked. She had great long gypsy lashes above her beaky nose, and that wink gave me a new spurt of strength. I bent to my task, and between my hard breathing, and the sound of her kneading dough, thumping and slapping and throwing it down on the counter, I fell into a peaceful state where nothing of the past could touch me.

Finally, when my elbows were about to fall right off like aftermarket hubcaps, she tapped me on the arm.

“Let’s see.” She opened up a little door in the demon’s belly. I was disappointed. I'd been hoping that somehow it would come out his _pipi_ , but when I saw the thick dark paste, I realized there was no way. She rubbed a little of the paste between her fingers, feeling for grit in the fineness. “Good enough,” she said, and poured in sugar, and set me back to grinding. It hurt my neck to turn and watch, but behind me I heard the sounds of her rolling the dough, and smelled it when she put a pan of butter to melt.

“Stop,” she said abruptly, when she was finished, and my hand all but flew away from the crank of its own accord. She gave me a chair and some tea, then, and I was too bedraggled to do anything but sit and watch her as she made the pastries. She scored the dough with a cartoonishly large knife, perfectly triangular, spotted with age except along its gleaming edge, the handle carved from bone to fit her hand.

At no point did she ask my name, or where I came from, and I felt no need to say. Instead, she talked occasionally of domestic things, as did I know how to sew, or mend roofs-- or had I ever caught a squirrel for dinner. I admitted I had not, but was not morally opposed to the idea.

”Can you sing?” she asked, then, and I said I could, a little. “Sing up the fire, then,” she said, pointing with her knife. “These ‘things’ will be ready soon.” The oven was built like a wall of its own, tiled with dark-green glossy tiles fitted together in a herringbone pattern. The door was smooth black iron. I didn't know what at all she meant, but I went over to the oven, and as I did, the wide black jaw of a door opened itself for me.

“Oof,” I said, into the blast of heat.

“That's it,” she said, so I poked my head forward and looked in. To my astonishment, there were no flames, only a clear shimmer of heat, and, heaped like tired puppies along the arching walls, about two dozen red, lizardy-looking things. This stopped me cold. Baba Yaga was one thing, but salamanders were another. What kind of world had I stepped into? I gave an exploratory whistle, and sure enough, the nearest salamander opened one sleepy golden eye. I could not tell if it was interested or merely annoyed, but I figured it was a start. What might a salamander like, I wondered. Maybe some Cure? I didn't have the energy for that, but I remembered a song I used to sing to my little sister as a lullaby, soft and low.

_Hey little girl is your daddy home or did he go away and leave you all alone oh no  
I can take you higher--_

I didn't know all the words, but they didn't mind, their glow going from a dull red to a glorious, blazing orange that hurt my eyes. They purred like kittens, basking in their own heat, and I longed to climb in and curl up with them. I could feel the heat washing over me in waves, but it seemed as long as I kept singing, it sloughed past me with no harm.

A sudden hiss and spittle jerked me upright, and I turned to see the witch beside me with her fingers in a bowl of water, flicking drops against the floor of the oven. The salamanders opened their eyes and hissed at her, and some of them scuttled out of range. I grimaced on their behalf. Being woken by cold water is an unpleasant experience no matter what kind of being you are.

“That's fine,” she said, “just right.” She went and got the baking trays, one in each hand, and jerked her head for me to grab a third. On the first tray, the pastries were fat dumplings --she called them purses-- and the next, rolled in crescents, which she called horns. On the last, the one I held, they were flat like tarts, which, with their dark centers, looked like eyes. I was eager to see how they would turn out.

We slid the trays in the oven and then she took me upstairs.

The stairs were narrow and I had to duck my head. I am not very tall, so this was a new experience for me, and I very nearly came to grief. A narrow hallway ran under the spine of the roof to allow us to walk upright, with a door to either side. She opened the one on the left.

“This would be your room,” she said curtly. It was warm, almost stuffy, and smelled of hay. A little futon and a low table were the only furniture, and a round copper tub. The beams were painted lapis blue.

“Yes,” I said, without thinking it over. She turned and took hard hold of my arm, the sharp nails holding me fast. I did not flinch away.

“You know what I am,” she said. “I eat girls like you when I can. My mill can grind your bones as easy as poppyseed.”

“That's none too easy, then,” I said, rotating my free wrist ruefully. She smiled a warning smile, showing me her teeth. They glinted, all of them, not like steel but like stone.

“ _None_ of it will be easy,” she said. “And if you balk or falter, _vsst_!” She made the universal gesture with her hand. I considered this. I was not scared, but I wanted her to know I took her seriously.

“Auntie,” I said finally, “I am made of more than meat. I think you will find you like me better alive.” She harrumphed.

“Humans always think they make for better society than sausages. Do you know how many turn out to be right?” (All the same, I think she liked me.)

“Well, then,” I said, and slid her a look sideways, “who’s to say I won't eat you instead?”

“Eat _me_?” She cackled. “I’d break your pretty teeth. I'm too tough and old for eating.”

“Are you?” I said. “Too tough for even just a nibble?” She cocked her head at me and frowned a little. I felt myself blushing, but did my best to hold her eyes. Slowly her brows lifted.

“Oh ho!” she said. “Oh ho! You think I want you for my bed, you little morsel? Ho- _ho_!” She chortled and wheezed, and I almost ran out right then-- but where would I go?

“No,” I said, mustering all my available chutzpah, “I didn't say that. I don't know what you want. But--” She stopped laughing and listened, though her face was still merry and much amused. “I know what _I_ want.”

“Ah-ha,” she laughed awkwardly, caught off-guard. I stared her down, face burning hotter than a hundred salamanders. To her credit, she gave it some thought, looking at me speculatively, sizing me up a different way.

“I do not take lovers,” she said, but that is a thing that can mean many things, from _I do not generally take lovers_, to _I have never before taken a lover,_ or even,  _Once I was in love_.

  
In any case, she did not sound opposed.

“Let's go check on the pastries,” I said, and she said, “Shit,” and hurried downstairs. When I came down after her, more slowly on those treacherous stairs, I found her opening windows, though there was no smoke.

“They smell fine to me,” I said, worried, but she only spared me a quick glance.

“Step back,” she said when she approached the oven, seeing that I made to go with her. I stood back obediently, and well it was I did, because no sooner was that oven door open than out came flying a hundred birds, the size of starlings, all glossy black with black beaks. They made for the windows and disappeared in a swarm. My heart beat hard in the silence after, and I was too stunned and afraid to look inside the oven to see if anything was left. “Tch,” said the witch, and pulled two trays out with her bare hands. I noticed then that she had no potholders in her kitchen.

To my relief, the purses and crescents were fine, only a few mussed or broken by the birds. These broken ones, she gave to me, saying it was my fault we’d left them in too long. The third tray (I peeked) was empty but for a few feathers, and she closed the door on it, leaving it to bake clean. Perhaps salamanders ate feathers? I did not ask. Instead, I ate my broken pastries with much relish and more tea, and then offered to wash the dishes. The sink had both drain and spigot, though where a walking house might get its water was just one more mystery to me. I was sparing with the spigot in case there was a tank.

By this time it was getting on late, and she declared she was too tired to make dinner, so would I be so good? I poked through the cupboards obligingly, and fried some eggs and onions in butter. The witch scowled at my vegetarian mess, and produced from somewhere a pungent and withered sausage to go with it. I dared not ask what was in it. She ate with good appetite, reading a newspaper pinned under her plate. It was written in a language I didn't recognize.

I watched her surreptitiously as I moved around the kitchen, wiping down the floury counters and sweeping the floor-- far more conscientious than I ever was at home. Her crinkly grey hair was done up in a thick knot beneath her kerchief, and I could see the curls on the back of her neck as she bent her head to read. I made more tea. Finally, she stretched and stood, washed her own plate and cup, shooing me away when I tried to take them.

“Get ready for bed,” she said, and pointed with her chin. I found the closet she indicated under the stairs. “I know you people like to--” she shuddered and turned away, “-- _brush your teeth_.”

Inside the closet, I found a toilet, of sorts, though it made an alarming sound like the grinding of rocks instead of the flushing of water I was accustomed to. There was also a sink, soap, and a toothbrush. No toothpaste, but I did my best with friction, and then washed my face and hands.

I emerged to find her waiting for me at the foot of the stairs, holding, no, not a candle, I realized, but a bare bit of flame between her fingers like a tuft of wool. I gaped as though it was the first astonishing thing I had seen all day. I couldn't help myself-- it was beautiful, the way she held it.

“Well?” she said, and the nervous excitement that had been laying dormant in my belly suddenly unfurled.

“Do you, ah, want company?” I asked. She looked at me long and steady, her lower lip tucked up in thought. I felt deeply the chasm of incommunicability between us, that the motives and fears she weighed were so far different from my own that even expressing the difference required new words, just as measuring the distance between stars had necessitated the birth of a new set of distances. For all I knew, the analogy wouldn't even make sense to her. Perhaps she had always known the distance between stars, intuitively, as though they were a part of her own body.

“It's a risky business,” she said finally. “You have to do what I say. Rules are rules.” I felt myself blushing.

“I don't mind that,” I said.

“Oh?”

“I don't.” She gave that some more thought while I waited, watching the little flame warble and flicker in her easy grasp. _What could she do to a sunbeam,_ I wondered.

“Well,” she said finally, “if you're foolish enough to think it worth it--”

“Yes,” I said, too hasty. She smiled.

“Alright,” she said, and gave again that wordless jerk of her chin: _upstairs_.

“Ah!” I said, excited and terrified beyond words. But the fact of her acquiescence gave me courage. “May I kiss you, then?” She snorted a little, but said I might if I wished.

She moved her burning hand aside, out of my way, and I shyly stepped inside the reach of her. I was only a little bit the taller, but she did her best to straighten up an extra inch to my level. My heart was butter in the sun, at that. I don't think I believed until that moment that she was actually interested beyond mere curiosity. I came at her sideways, smelling the wool of her kerchief, the smell of her hair: warmth, resin, the clean emptiness of a windy day. There was a buzz around her, I could feel it, but I did not mind it, and pressed through to put my lips to her skin. There was a shock to my mouth, more percussive than electrical, as though she was a door on which someone was knocking. I brushed her cheek with my mouth, feeling the contours of the buzz. I felt her breath against my own cheek, warm and sudden, and it sent a line of pleasure up over my ear and down my spine. I followed the heat, blind, sleepwalkering, until I stumbled over her mouth and was trapped there for what may well have been days.

She did not move her lips against me, but held still and let me kiss her, her mouth soft and deep, and it was her breath that kissed me back, warm gasps as I pulled on her with my teeth, or ran my tongue carefully between her lips, stroking her, tasting her.

Her teeth were strange and irresistible, smooth as round river stones, and her mouth had the clean, rocky taste of a river, too. I wanted to drink her in long, great swallows.  
I kissed her blindly, and put my hands on her waist to pull her near. She was as immovable as a tree, so instead I leaned myself against her, trusting that she would hold me up. She was stout, but curvy, and beneath those outer curves I could feel unyielding cords in the lines of her back and belly, like the steel cables of a bridge.

I shuddered when she kissed me back. It hurt, it was like being caught in a vice, but it was exhilarating, and soft, too. I could tell she was trying to be gentle. I could tell she could have snipped off the end of my tongue easily with her teeth, but wouldn't, so long as I gave her no cause. My nipples rose to think of that mouth on them. A dart of heat ran from breastbone to tailbone as all my desire came alive, the desire to be naked with her, close to her, tasting her and being tasted.

She pulled away, with one last hard breath.

"Come now," she said, and I followed as if in a dream, my feet floating me up the stairs.

Her room was dark, but she put the flame into a lamp, which she turned down low. It was the kind of light to make you fall in love. I, at least, was falling in love --had been all day-- and now, as she slipped off her kerchief and uncovered a handsome set of horns, I lost my grip & fell even more.

She shook her hair out. It was thick and sprang up around her face. She looked so much younger with her hair exposed, showing more black than grey in the lamplight, the horns curled like rams' horns down to her temples, framing her dark eyes. She drew me towards her bed.

I admired her white pillows and heaps of duvets, but the bed itself was extravagantly carved mahogany, with a single yellow eye as large as an apple that watched us balefully from the center of the headboard..

“What's that?” I asked. She glanced.

“Oh,” casually, “it watches over me when I sleep.” I looked at it with distaste.

“Is it… sentient? Will it be bothered by us, uh…” She shrugged, clearly unconcerned, and took my face in her fierce, strong hands. I decided I did not mind being the first to find out.

We stood by the bed and kissed a while longer, putting off the moment when gravity would pull us down into even greater intimacy. I touched her slowly, her wide hips, her round belly, her sharp shoulders and tender forearms, her wrists, her inner elbows, the sides of her breasts, her throat, which made her tilt her head back and purr.

In the soft light, her face had a haunted beauty, all hollows and hills. She pulled her head back down sharp like a bird and her eyes gleamed at me with a red hunger that made me see that she was not old, but ageless, a creature who had seen the making and unmaking of many worlds before mine. I did not mind. I wanted to throw myself into that fire, and be melted down, devoured, made new. I stood straight before her and reached out and boldly took hold of her horns. _My hunger is equal to yours_ , is what I wanted to say, _my need as hollow_. I tilted back her head and ran my mouth in slaverous lines up the hot length of her throat, holding her still and moaning beneath my worship.

I bore her down under me to the bed, and this time she was pliant, pulling me with her, wrapping her wiry legs around my thighs. She fought me a little when I found her ear, but I rode her well, keeping good hold. I buried my face in her neck, rocking her against my thigh until I could feel the hot maw of her through my jeans. I wanted to take her clothes off, but those _horns_. Built in ridges and smoothed by age, fat as parsnips at their widest point-- I could not keep my hands off them, they were so round and solid. Finally-- she did not ask me to stop stroking them, but took hold of my hands and put the tips of my fingers to her mouth and tasted them, one by one, languidly, searching me for salt. Time slowed. I whimpered. Her eyes were half-closed and she was so beautiful.

“Turn over,” she said, and before I knew it, I was on my belly, shaking as she lay a searing line of kisses along my jaw and slit my clothes down the back.

“Yes,” I gasped, squirming, “yes,” pushing my body back against her where she held me down. I had never felt so right in my body, so unashamed. _Feral cat,_ she called me, _mannerless beast_. She said it with pleasure, and swore she'd teach me manners.

“Please,” I begged her, “please do.”

“Stay there,” she said roughly, and pulled away. With a rush of excitement, I imagined her undressing, but then there was a noise that horrified me --the dry firewood breaking of bone-- and I tried to turn to look. Before I could, she was on me, hand deep in my hair, fingernails sharp on my scalp, and her voice in my ear.

“That's it,” she said, soothing, and placed a thing against me which I was not at all expecting. I froze in shock, my limbs braced as if to catch me-- and then flexed in one great arch as she speared me. “ _Oh_ ,” she groaned, gutteral in my ear, and thrust again, tearing into me until finally I found my voice and screamed. “Shh,” she said, “shh,” riding me slower. “Oh, you are so _sweet_.”

I could not speak. I could not think. I could only writhe, spitted, feeling the bed turn wet beneath me as I knotted up my fists into the blankets and fought to breathe. It was cruel. It was cruel because I had no name by which to call her, no god beyond her by which I could swear. _Chaos, Destroyer, All-things-burning_ , I babbled, as she gave me again and again her lesson. She slowed and slowed, dragging it out, making me feel it, groaning along with me at each reopening. It went on so long that I felt I had no skin, that everything in me was on the outside, and I said _Oh oh what are you doing to me what are you doing to me_. I felt that she was changing me slowly, cell by cell, into something made entirely of light. I shook uncontrollably, feeling as though she was the force moving me. It was my own pleasure of course, but that was by now a thing so enormous it felt outside me, a thing that had me by the scruff of the neck and shook me. It must be her.

Finally she broke me, as the moon breaks a wave after a long journey of swells, but I was not the wave, only under it, and as I felt the wave descending, I craned my head around and begged her please to kiss me. She kissed me, howling into my mouth like a vortex as she came.

Eons later, sore and languid, I could move nothing but my mouth, and muttered, variously, _How? Why? What have you done?_ She shushed me, one sleepy possessive arm thrown across me, her head pillowed still where it had fallen against my side.

“Always wanted to see what men made all the fuss for,” she said. “Figured you wouldn't mind.” I managed a shaky laugh.

“Mind, no. No, but-- but that wasn't what I'd planned. I didn't know you could do that.” She snorted, as if to say it was the _least_ of the things she could do. I shivered to think...

“Next time,” she said smugly. “Sleep.” I went boneless, and disappeared into a warm dark place.

**Author's Note:**

> As a child, one of my absolute favorite books was a big, fat collection of Russian Fairy Tales. The motives and aesthetics of the stories were tantalizingly strange, and often unfathomable, and I think that's maybe why I read them again and again, always trying to figure out why things went the way they did. The title of this story was inspired by the shortest, most incomprehensible inclusion in the fairy tale collection, which was, I think, called, "The Straw, The Boot, and The Pig Bladder".
> 
> I always had a soft spot in my heart for the much-maligned Baba Yaga, and her house on chicken feet. It's possible that in this story, I am working out some of my latent mother-daughter relationship issues, but I think that even more than that, it's my way of exploring what it is that I like about myself as a woman, getting older, and the kind of beauty and power and don't-give-fuck-ness that I hope to someday embody as a woman of many years.
> 
> An interesting note that I learned recently is that the house with chicken feet is not just a product of someone's wonderful imagination, but was actually inspired by Siberian nomads who built raised storage huts by using close-growing groups of trees as posts. Too cool! There's a picture of one here: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/File:Sami_Storehouse.jpg  
> Honestly, how anyone could see it and NOT want to write a story about it, I have no idea.
> 
> As always, comments and critiques are welcomed, and if you like it, consider following it, cuz I might have future chapters. If you find it too confusing, please let me know-- it's meant to be a little ambiguous, but not a lot, so feedback on that front is encouraged. Thanks!


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